لخّصلي

Kill a Mocking Bird
The story is set in the small town of Maycomb, Alabama, in the middle of the
Great Depression. Six-year-old Jean Louise Finch (Scout Finch) lives with her
older brother, Jeremy Atticus Finch (Jem), and her father, Atticus Finch. Atticus is
a prominent lawyer and they are reasonably well off in society. He depends on the
family's black cook, Calpurnia, to help raise the kids. Scout, however, finds
Calpurnia overbearing and believes that Calpurnia is more supportive of Jem than
her.
Scout and Jem spend much of their time creating and acting out fantasies.
One Summer, a boy named Charles Harris Baker (Dill) comes to spend the
summer with his aunt, the Finches' neighbour Miss Rachel. The three children
become friends, and, pushed by Dill's wild imagination, they soon become
fascinated with the spooky house called Radley Place. A man named Nathan
Radley owns the house, but it is his brother, Arthur Radley (whom the children call
Boo) who interests and terrifies them. He is believed to be locked up in the house
and once stabbed his father, Mr. Radley, with scissors. Local children are
frightened and think strange things of Boo. Dill dares Jem to run up and touch the
Radley house, and Scout is sure she sees someone watching them from inside
behind a curtain.
Summer comes to an end, and Dill returns to his house in Mississippi. Scout
starts school, which she hates though she was eager to go to school. On the first
day, her teacher, Miss Caroline, is angry because she knows how to read and
prevents her from writing in cursive. When she comes home from school upset,
Atticus encourages her to think about the incident from Miss Caroline’s viewpoint
as it was also her first day in school as a teacher. He suggests that she put herself in
others’ shoes to understand how they see things. Scout and Jem occasionally find
treasures stuffed into a knothole of a tree next to the Radleys’ fence. When they
find several sticks of gum, Scout and Jem ignore the rumour that everything on the
Radley property is poisoned.
Summer arrives and Dill returns once again. Dill, Scout, and Jem sneak onto
the Radley property one night to look in through the window, but Nathan Radley
sees them and thinking they're thieves, goes after them with a gun. As they run
away, Jem's pants get caught in the Radley fence and he leaves them behind. The
whole neighbourhood comes out hearing the noise and commotion and the children
show up with the rest of the neighborhood at Nathan Radley’s gate. When
someone questions about Jem’s pants they explain that Jem is without pants
because Dill won the pants in a game of strip poker. When Jem goes back to
Radleys’ fence to get the pants later that night, he finds them mended and folded.
Meanwhile, Scout and Jem continue to find gifts in the knothole until Nathan
Radley cements it shut one day, saying that the tree is dying. Jem is very hurt,
especially when Atticus mentions that the tree doesn’t look ill. A few months later,
in the dead of the night in winter, the Finch's neighbour Miss Maudie Atkinson's
house catches fire, and as Scout and Finch watch it burn, someone puts a blanket
around Scout’s shoulders. Jem realizes that Boo must have done it. Scout is
horrified, but Atticus just hides his laughter.
That year, Atticus is appointed by the court to defend a black man, Tom
Robinson, who is accused of raping Mayella Ewell, the daughter of a poor,
unemployed, alcoholic white man named Bob Ewell. As Atticus is appointed to
fight on behalf of Tom, there are racial tensions in Maycomb. Scout and Jem
become targets of abuse from schoolmates, neighbours, townspeople, and even
some family members. Atticus pleads with Scout not to beat up people when they
insult her about this, something that Scout doesn’t understand. While at Finch’s
Landing, Francis, a family member who is a year older than Scout provokes her to
fight him, so that she gets in trouble with her beloved Uncle Jack. Later at home,
Scout tells Uncle Jack her side of the story and tells him he punishes her based on
Francis’s incorrect statement She also begs him to keep this a secret from Atticus.
Scout and Jem receive air rifles for Christmas,
though Atticus refuses to teach them how to shoot. His only advice is that it’s a sin
to kill a mockingbird.
Later in the winter, as Scout and Jem take out their new air rifles to hunt for
rabbits, they discover a beloved Maycomb dog named Tim Johnson behaving
strangely. Calpurnia recognizes that the dog has rabies, she alerts the neighbours,
and calls Atticus and the Sheriff, Heck Tate. Mr. Tate, the sheriff makes Atticus
shoot the dog, surprising the children. The children had no idea Atticus even knew
how to shoot a gun, but Miss Maudie says he used to be the best shot in the county.
In the spring, Scout and Jem walk down the road to meet Atticus after work,
they go past the house of Mrs Dubose, an unpleasant woman. Jem is able to ignore
her abuse for a while, until one day when she insults him about Atticus defending
Tom Robinson. Jem shows his anger by cutting the tops off of her
beloved camellia bushes. As punishment, Mrs. Dubose asks Jem to read to her
every day after school for a month, and Atticus agrees he has to do so. Mrs.
Dubose is nasty and frightens both Jem and Scout, as she has fits of some sort.
Atticus forces Jem to read for an extra week and a month after he finishes, Mrs.
Dubose dies. Atticus explains that Mrs. Dubose was a morphine addict and used
Jem’s daily reading to break herself of her addiction before she died—she wanted
to die free. Atticus admits that he made Jem read because he wanted Jem to see
that courage isn’t,
“seeing a man with a gun, but it’s doing something you know is
right, even if you know you’ll fail.”
Calpurnia takes the children to attend her black church one Sunday. Scout, is
shocked to discover that Calpurnia lives a double life, as she speaks one way in the
Finch home and another way among her black community. When they return
home, Aunt Alexandra, Atticus’s sister, is there to stay with them for “a while’ and
to be a “feminine influence” on Scout. Scout is unhappy when Aunt Alexandra
forbids her from visiting Calpurnia’s home. Aunt Alexandra is a white woman
whose social views are very conservative than Atticus's. She treats Calpurnia more
like a servant than a family member and tries to make the children understand that
the Finches are fine white people. Jem then says the Ewell family is also made up
of “Fine Folks” as they are also white. On the day that Aunt Alexandra forbids
Scout from visiting Calpurnia, Scout discovers Dill hiding under her bed after
running away from his mother and her new husband. Jem breaks their code by
telling Atticus, though Dill’s mother and Miss Rachel allow Dill to stay in
Maycomb. That night, Dill admits that he was lonely and suggests that Boo Radley
must also be lonely too, but Boo hasn’t run away because, he has nowhere to go.
The weekend before Tom Robinson’s trial, Scout, Jem, and Dill observe
tensions in Maycomb rising. groups of men gather on the Finches’ lawn.
According to Scout, this only happens when someone dies or when people want to
discuss politics. The day before the trial, a mob surrounds the jail where Tom is
being held. Scout, Jem, and Dill sneak out of the house to find out where Atticus
went and join Atticus at the courthouse, who thinks a mob attack on Tom is
possible. Scout doesn't realize what's going on and is scared and uncomfortable
when she finds herself in the middle of a group of men she doesn’t know,
especially when she realizes that Atticus is scared. She recognizes a man
named Mr. Cunnigham in the crowd and asks him about his son, Walter, who is
Scout's classmate. The man is ashamed and asks the mob to leave. The next
morning, everyone hears the story of bravery, it makes Dill happy and angers Aunt
Alexandra.
At the trial, Atticus defends Tom and makes it clear that both Mayella and Mr.
Ewell are lying, since Tom doesn’t have the use of his left arm and couldn’t have
choked and beaten a woman. Mayella’s injuries show that whoever beat her was
left-handed. Atticus suggests that Mr. Ewell, who is left-handed, beat Mayella
himself when he caught Mayella touching Tom. Tom runs away even though it
makes him look guilty. Scout, Jem, and Dill creep into the court to watch the trial
and the proceedings from the balcony, where the black people are forced to sit.
While the prosecuting lawyer, Mr. Gilmer, questions Tom, Dill has to leave. He’s
extremely upset by the racist way that Mr. Gilmer speaks to Tom. Outside, they
meet Mr Raymond a white man who chooses to live with the black people. He
notes that Dill can only experience this kind of reaction because he’s a child,
whereas adults learn to ignore their inborn sense of right and wrong. Jem is sure
Atticus will win the case, but the all-white jury convicts Tom guilty of rape. Jem is
particularly shaken by the verdict, and his faith in justice is even further shaken
when Tom tries to escape from prison and is shot and killed.
Even though Tom Robinson was convicted, Bob Ewell is furious that Atticus
made him look like a fool in court. He harasses Helen Robinson, Tom’s widow,
and even tries to break into Judge Taylor’s house. Atticus isn’t concerned,
however—he believes that Mr. Ewell took his revenge when he spit in Atticus’s
face the week after the trial. However, as Jem and Scout walk home alone from a
Halloween party one night, Mr. Ewell attacks them. Scout can’t see what
happening because of her Halloween costume but hears Jem’s arm break before
someone rushes in to help. In the confusion, Mr. Ewell is stabbed to death. The
man who saved Jem and Scout carries Jem home, and once inside, Scout realizes
that the man is Boo Radley. Mr. Tate decides to keep Boo's involvement in Mr.
Ewell's death quiet, which Scout understands—she suggests to Atticus that
punishing him would be like killing a mockingbird. Scout takes Boo to say
goodnight to Jem, who’s unconscious and then walks Boo home. As Scout stands
on the Radley porch, she sees the world as Boo must see it and looks back on the
experiences of her last few summers. Scout begins to understand that Boo truly
was their neighbour and cared about “his children,” Scout, Jem, and Dill. When
she gets home, Scout falls asleep as Atticus reads to her at Jem's bedside.